The earliest human remains found in Portugal are Neanderthal-type bones from Furninhas. A distinct culture first emerged in the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) middens of the lower Tagus valley, dated about 5500 BC. Neolithic (New Stone Age) cultures entered from Andalusia, leaving behind varied types of beehive huts and passage graves. Agriculture, pottery, and the working of soft metals followed by the same route. In the 1st millennium BC, Celtic peoples entered the peninsula via the Pyrenees, and many groups were projected westward by natural pressure. Phoenician and later Carthaginian influence reached southern Portugal in the same period. By 500 BC, Iron Age cultures predominated in the north. Celtic hilltop settlements (castros) retained their vitality after the Roman conquest.

After the Second Punic War (218–201 BC), Rome dominated the eastern and southern seaboards of the Iberian Peninsula, and Celtic peoples who had partially absorbed the indigenous population occupied the west. A Celtic federation, the Lusitani, resisted Roman penetration under the brilliant leadership of Viriathus; however, after Viriathus was assassinated about 140 BC, Decius Junius Brutus led a Roman force northward through central Portugal, crossed the Douro River, and subdued the Gallaeci. Julius Caesar governed the territory for a time. In 25 BC Caesar Augustus founded Augusta Emerita (Mérida) as the capital of Lusitania, which incorporated present-day central Portugal. Gallaecia (Galicia), to the north of the Douro, became a separate province under the Antonines. In Roman times the present-day districts of Beja and Évora formed a wheat belt. The valley of the Tagus was famous for its horses and farms, and there were important mines in the Alentejo. Notable Roman remains include the Temple of Diana at Évora and the site of Conimbriga (Condeixa). Christianity reached Lusitania in the 3rd century and Galicia in the 4th.

After AD 406, foreign invaders forced their way into Gaul and crossed the Pyrenees. A Germanic tribe, the Suebi, settled in southern Galicia, and their rulers resided at or near Bracara Augusta (Braga) and Portucale. The Suebi annexed Lusitania and for a time overran the rest of the peninsula, but the Visigoths subdued them and extinguished their monarchy in 469. There are no records until about 550, when the Suebic monarchy had been restored and was reconverted to Catholicism by St. Martin of Braga. When Muslim forces invaded in 711, the only serious Gothic resistance was made at Mérida; upon its fall the northwest submitted. Berber troops were placed in central Portugal and Galicia. When ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I set up the Umayyad monarchy at Córdoba in 756, there was some resistance in the west; indeed, Lisbon was independent for a few years in the early 9th century. The restoration of the Christian sees of Galicia, the discovery of the supposed tomb of St. James, and the erection of his shrine at Santiago de Compostela (Santiago) were followed by the organization of the frontier territory of Portucale in 868 by Vimara Peres; Coimbra was annexed by the Christians but later was lost again.

The county and kingdom of Portugal to 1383

By the 10th century the county of Portugal (north of the Douro) was held by Mumadona Dias and her husband Hermenegildo Gonçalves and their descendants, one of whom was tutor and father-in-law to the Leonese ruler Alfonso V. However, when this dynasty was overthrown by the Navarrese-Castilian house of Sancho III Garcés (Sancho the Great), the western county lost its autonomy. Sancho’s son Ferdinand I of Castile reconquered Coimbra in 1064 but entrusted it to a Mozarabic governor. When the African Almoravids annexed Muslim Spain, Alfonso VI, who ruled Castile and León (1072–1109), provided for the defense of the west by calling on Henry, brother of Duke Eudes (Odo) of Burgundy, whom he married to his illegitimate daughter Teresa and made count of Portugal. Thus, from 1095 Henry and Teresa (who used the title of queen) ruled Portugal and Coimbra. Upon Alfonso VI’s death, his realms passed to his daughter Urraca, who was queen from 1109 to 1126, and her little son Alfonso (who became Alfonso VII upon Urraca’s death). Henry of Portugal sought power but had achieved little when he died in 1112, leaving Teresa with an infant son, Afonso Henriques (later Afonso I). Teresa’s intrigues with her Galician favourite, Fernando Peres of Trava, lost her the support of the Portuguese barons, and in 1128 followers of Afonso Henriques defeated her and drove her into exile.

Afonso Henriques became count of Portugal, and, although he was at first obliged to submit to Alfonso VII, his cousin, Afonso began to use the title of king, according to tradition following on his victory over the Muslims at Ourique on July 25, 1139 (though this may be more legend than history). In 1143 Alfonso VII accepted his cousin’s autonomy, but the title of king was formally conceded only in 1179, when Afonso Henriques placed Portugal under the direct protection of the Holy See, promising an annual tribute. Afonso had captured Santarém (March 1147) and Lisbon (October 1147), the latter with the aid of English, French, German, and Flemish Crusaders bound for Palestine. An English priest, Gilbert of Hastings, became the first bishop of the restored see of Lisbon.

Although the new Moroccan dynasty of the Almohads struck back (1179–84), the Portuguese frontier was firmly established on the Tagus when Afonso I died (December 6, 1185). The new military order, the Templars—including those of Calatrava (from c. 1156) and of Santiago (from c. 1170)—governed castles and territory on the frontier, and the Cistercians were responsible for the introduction of agriculture and architecture in central Portugal (Alcobaça).

The kingdom and the Reconquista

Although Afonso I granted charters to new settlements, it was his son Sancho I (reigned 1185–1211) who enfranchised many municipalities (concelhos), especially in eastern and central Portugal. The privileges of these communities were embodied in charters (forais), which attracted settlers from the more feudal north. Even Muslims were enfranchised, though many of them were enslaved. Assisted by transient Crusaders, Sancho captured Silves in the Algarve in 1189; however, the following year an Almohad army from Africa advanced to the Tagus, and, although Lisbon, Santarém, and Tomar stood firm, the Muslims recovered Silves in 1191, together with most of the land south of the Tagus. But peace was made before Sancho’s death, and it was left to his son Afonso II (1211–23) to endeavour to strengthen the power of the throne at the expense of the church.

Although Afonso II was an unwarlike king, his followers were beside the Castilians at the great Christian victory in the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 and, again assisted by Crusaders, recovered Alcácer do Sal in 1217. Meanwhile, Afonso repudiated the bequests of large estates made by his father to his brothers and accepted those to his sisters only after a war with León and in a form, settled by the pope, that recognized Afonso’s sovereignty. In the first year of his reign, Afonso called a meeting of the Cortes (parliament) at Coimbra, to which the nobility and prelates were summoned (representatives of the commoners were not to appear until 1254). Both estates obtained important concessions; in fact, the position of the church and the orders was now so strong that Afonso II and his successors were involved in recurrent conflicts with Rome. Afonso himself instituted (from 1220) inquirições, or royal commissions, to investigate the nature of holdings and to recover whatever had been illegally taken from the crown.

Little is known of the reign of his son Sancho II (1223–c. 1246), but the reconquest of the Alentejo was now completed, and much of the Algarve had also been retaken. When Sancho became king, he found the church in full ascendancy as a result of the agreement made before his father’s death. At all events, his younger brother Afonso, who had become count of Boulogne through his marriage (1238) to Matilde, daughter of Raynald I, Comte (count) de Dammartin, was granted a papal commission (1245) to take over the government, and Sancho was ordered to be deposed by papal bull. When Afonso reached Lisbon (late 1245 or early 1246), he received the support of the church and of the inhabitants of Lisbon and other towns. After a civil war lasting two years, Sancho II retired to Toledo, dying there in January 1248.

On his arrival the count of Boulogne had already declared himself king as Afonso III, and the death of Sancho without issue gave his usurpation the mantle of legality. He brought together the divided kingdom, completed the reconquest of the Algarve, transferred the capital from Coimbra to Lisbon, and, fortified by the support of the towns, summoned the Cortes at Leiria, where in 1254 commoners representing the municipalities made their first appearance. Afonso III’s conquest of the Algarve aroused the jealousy of Castile. Campaigns were fought in 1250 and 1252, and peace was made only by means of a marriage pact. Although still the husband of Matilde of Boulogne, Afonso married Beatriz, illegitimate daughter of Alfonso X of Castile, holding the disputed territory of the Algarve as a fief of Castile until the eldest son of the marriage should reach age seven, at which time the Algarve was to return to Portugal. This marriage led to a dispute with the Holy See, in which Afonso was placed under an interdict. Though beholden to Rome, Afonso refused to give way; in 1263 the bigamous marriage was legalized and his eldest son, Dinis, legitimized. Shortly afterward Afonso launched inquirições that deprived the church of much property. The prelates protested these actions of the royal commissions, and most of them subsequently left the country. Although Afonso was excommunicated and threatened with deposition, he continued to defy the church until shortly before his death early in 1279.

The achievements of Afonso’s reign—the completion of the Reconquista, the assertion of royal power before the church, and the incorporation of the commoners in the Cortes—indicate important institutional advances. Under his son Dinis (1279–1325), Portugal came into closer touch with western Europe. The chartering of fairs and the increased use of minted money bear witness to the growth of commerce, and the planting of pine forests to hold back the advancing sand dunes near Leiria illustrates Dinis’s interest in furthering shipbuilding and agriculture. Having already adopted various measures to stimulate foreign trade, Dinis in 1317 engaged a Genoese admiral, Emmanuele Pessagno, to build up his navy. He founded the University of Coimbra (at first in Lisbon) in 1290 and was both a poet and a patron of literature. Yet he was especially famed as the rei lavrador (farmer king) for his interest in the land.

Despite Dinis’s attachment to the arts of peace, Portugal was involved in strife several times during his reign. In 1297 the Treaty of Alcañices with Castile confirmed Portugal’s possession of the Algarve and provided for an alliance between Portugal and Castile. The mother of Dinis’s son, the future Afonso IV (1325–57), was Isabel, daughter of Peter III of Aragon. This remarkable woman, later canonized as St. Elizabeth of Portugal and popularly known as the Rainha Santa (the Holy Queen), successfully exercised her influence in pursuit of peace on several occasions.

Disputes with Castile

Afonso IV (the Brave) was also involved in various disputes with Castile. Isabel, who had retired to the convent of Santa Clara at Coimbra, continued to intervene in favour of peace. However, upon Isabel’s death in 1336 war broke out, and peace terms were not made until 1340, when Afonso, leading a Portuguese army, joined Alfonso XI of Castile in the great victory over the Muslims on the Salado River in Andalusia. Afonso’s son Peter was married (1336) to Constança (died 1345), daughter of the Castilian infante Juan Manuel. Soon after the marriage, however, Peter fell in love with her cousin Inês de Castro, with whom he had several children. Afonso was persuaded to allow the assassination of Inês in 1355, and one of the earliest acts of Peter I as king was to take vengeance on her murderers. During his short reign (1357–67), Peter devoted himself to the dispensation of justice; his judgments, which he executed himself, were severe and often violent, and his iron rule was tempered only by fits of reveling.

Ferdinand I (1367–83), Peter’s son by Constança, inherited a wealthy throne almost free of external entanglements, but the dispute between Peter, king of Castile and León, and Henry of Trastámara (later Henry II) over the Castilian throne was raging. On the murder of Peter in 1369, several Castilian towns offered Ferdinand their allegiance, which he was unwise enough to accept. Henry II duly invaded Portugal, and, by the Peace of Alcoutim (1371), Ferdinand was forced to renounce his claim and to promise to marry Henry’s daughter; however, he instead took a Portuguese wife, Leonor Teles, despite the fact that she was already married and against the wishes of the commoners of Lisbon. In 1372 Ferdinand made an alliance with the English through John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, who had married the elder daughter of Peter and claimed the Castilian throne. In 1372 Ferdinand provoked Henry II, who invaded Portugal and besieged Lisbon. Unable to resist, Ferdinand was forced to repudiate his alliance with John of Gaunt and to act as an ally of Castile, surrendering various castles and persons as hostages. It was only on the death of Henry in 1379 that Ferdinand dared to openly challenge Castile again. In 1380 the English connection was resumed, and in the following year John of Gaunt’s brother Edmund of Langley, earl of Cambridge (afterward Edmund of Langley, 1st duke of York), took a force to Portugal for the invasion of Castile and betrothed his son Edward to Ferdinand’s only legitimate child, Beatriz. In mid-campaign Ferdinand came to terms with the enemy (August 1382), agreeing to marry Beatriz to a Castilian prince. She did, in effect, become the wife of John I of Castile, and, when Ferdinand died prematurely decrepit, Leonor became regent and Castile claimed the Portuguese crown.

Leonor had long been the paramour of the Galician João Fernandes Andeiro, conde de Ourém, who had intrigued with both England and Castile and whose influence was much resented by Portuguese patriots. Opponents of Castile chose as their leader an illegitimate son of Peter I: John, master of Aviz, who killed Ourém (December 1383) and, being assured of the support of the populace of Lisbon, assumed the title of defender of the realm. Leonor fled first to Alenquer and then to Santarém, and the king of Castile came to her aid; soon, however, he relegated her to a Spanish convent. Lisbon was besieged for five months (1384), but an outbreak of plague forced the Castilians to retire.

The house of Aviz, 1383–1580

The legitimate male line of Henry of Burgundy ended at Ferdinand’s death, and, when the Cortes met at Coimbra in March–April 1385, John of Aviz was declared king (as John I) and became the founder of a new dynasty. This result was not unopposed, as many of the nobility and clergy still considered the queen of Castile the rightful heiress. However, popular feeling was strong, and John I had valuable and trusted allies in Nuno Álvares Pereira, “the Holy Constable,” his military champion, and in João das Regras, his chancellor and jurist.

Independence assured

A number of towns and castles still held out for Castile when in August 1385 John I of Castile and a considerable army made their appearance in central Portugal. Although much outnumbered, the Portuguese won the great Battle of Aljubarrota (August 14, 1385), in which the Castilian chivalry was dispersed and John of Castile himself barely escaped. The victory assured John I of his kingdom and made him a desirable ally. A small force of English archers had been present at Aljubarrota in support of the Portuguese. The Treaty of Windsor, concluded on May 9, 1386, raised the Anglo-Portuguese connection to the status of a firm, binding, and permanent alliance between the two crowns. John of Gaunt duly went to the Iberian Peninsula in July 1386 and attempted an invasion of Castile in conjunction with John I. The invasion was not successful, but in 1387 the Portuguese king married John of Gaunt’s daughter Philippa of Lancaster, who introduced various English practices into Portugal. The truce arranged with Castile in 1387 was prolonged at intervals until peace was finally concluded in 1411.

The victory of John I may be regarded as a triumph of the national spirit over the feudal attachment to established order. Because much of the older nobility sided with Castile, John rewarded his followers at their expense and the crown’s. Meanwhile, commerce prospered, and the marriage of John’s daughter Isabella to Philip III (the Good) of Burgundy was to be followed by the growth of close trading relations between Portugal and Philip’s county of Flanders. With the conclusion of peace with Castile, John found an outlet for the activities of his frontiersmen and of his own sons in the conquest of Ceuta (1415), from which the great age of Portuguese expansion may be dated.

In 1437, during the short reign of John’s eldest son, Edward (Duarte; 1433–38), an unsuccessful attempt to conquer Tangier was made by John’s third son, Prince Henry the Navigator, and his younger brother Ferdinand (who was captured by the Moors and died, still unransomed, in 1443). Edward’s son Afonso V (1438–81) was still a child when Edward died, and Edward’s brother Pedro, duke of Coimbra (Dom Pedro), had himself made regent (1440) instead of the widow, Leonor of Aragon. However, Pedro’s own regency was later challenged by the powerful Bragança family, descended from Afonso, illegitimate son of John of Aviz, and Beatriz, daughter of Nuno Álvares Pereira. This family continued to set the young king against his uncle, who was forced to resign the regency, driven to take up arms, and killed at Alfarrobeira (May 1449). Afonso proved unable to resist the demands of the Braganças, who now became the wealthiest family in Portugal. Having married Joan, daughter of Henry IV of Castile, Afonso laid claim to the Castilian throne and became involved in a lengthy struggle with Ferdinand and Isabella in the region of Zamora and Toro, where he was defeated in 1476. He then sailed to France in a failed attempt to enlist the support of Louis XI, and on his return he concluded with Castile the Treaty of Alcáçovas (1479), abandoning the claims of his wife. Afonso never recovered from his reverse, and during his last years his son John administered the kingdom.

Consolidation of the monarchy

John II (1481–95) was as cautious, firm, and jealous of royal power as his father had been openhanded and negligent. At his reign’s first Cortes, John exacted a detailed oath of homage that displeased his greatest vassals. A suspicion of conspiracy enabled him to arrest Fernando II, duke of Bragança, and many of his followers; the duke was sentenced to death and executed at Évora in 1484. As well as attacking the power of the nobility, John lessened the effects of the unfavourable treaty with Castile. Calculating and resolute, he later received the epithet “the Perfect Prince.”

Predeceased by his legitimate son, John II was succeeded by his cousin the duke of Beja, as Manuel I (1495–1521), known as “the Fortunate.” Manuel, who assumed the title of “Lord of the Conquest, Navigation, and Commerce of India, Ethiopia, Arabia, and Persia,” inherited, because of the work of John II, a firmly established autocratic monarchy and a rapidly expanding overseas empire. Drawn toward Spain by the common need to defend their overseas interests as defined by the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), Manuel nourished the hope that the whole peninsula could be united under the house of Aviz; to that end he married Isabella, eldest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. However, she died in 1498 while giving birth to a son, Miguel da Paz. This child, recognized as heir to Portugal, Castile, and Aragon, died in infancy. Manuel then married Isabella’s sister Maria (died 1517) and eventually Eleanor, sister of the emperor Charles V.

As a condition of his marriage to Isabella, Manuel was required to “purify” Portugal of Jews. After Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, John II had admitted many Jewish refugees; he had taxed the Jews heavily but was also to supply ships for them to leave Portugal. This was not done, however, and Manuel now ordered all Jews to leave within 10 months, by October 1497. On their assembly in Lisbon, every effort was made to secure their conversion by promises or by force. Some who resisted were allowed to go, but the rest were “converted” under promise that no inquiry would be made into their beliefs for 20 years. As “Christians,” they could not be forced to emigrate, and, indeed, they were prohibited from leaving Portugal. In April 1506 a large number of these “new Christians,” or Marranos, were massacred in Lisbon during a riot, but Manuel afterward protected the Marranos and allowed many to emigrate to Holland, where their experience with Portuguese trade was put at the service of the Dutch.

If Manuel failed to realize his dream of ruling Spain, his son John III (1521–57) lacked the power to resist Castilian influence. A pious, retiring man, he was ruled by his wife, Catherine, sister of Emperor Charles V, and encouraged the installation of the Inquisition (1536); the first auto-da-fé (“act of faith,” a public condemnation or punishment of so-called heretics during the Inquisition) was held in 1540. The Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), established in 1540, soon controlled education in Portugal. In 1529 the settlement by the Treaty of Zaragoza (Saragossa) of a dispute over the possession of the Moluccas (an island group part of present-day Indonesia) removed an obstacle to Portuguese-Spanish understanding, and the line dividing Portuguese and Spanish interests in the New World (established by the Treaty of Tordesillas) was matched by a similar line in the Pacific. Meanwhile, this dual theoretical division of new lands between the Portuguese and Spanish and the Reformation had come between Portugal and its English ally.

John III was succeeded by his grandson Sebastian (1557–78), then only three years old. As a child Sebastian became obsessed with the idea of a Crusade against Morocco. Fanatically religious, he had no doubts of his own powers and listened only to flatterers. He visited Ceuta and Tangier in 1574 and began in 1576 to prepare a large expedition against Larache; his forces departed in June 1578 and on August 4 were utterly destroyed by the Moors in the Battle of the Three Kings near Alcazarquivir (Ksar el-Kebir). Sebastian and some 8,000 of his forces were killed, some 15,000 were captured, and only a handful escaped.

Sebastian was succeeded by his great-uncle, Cardinal Henry (1578–80), a brother of John III. His age and celibacy made it certain that the Portuguese throne would soon pass from the direct line of Aviz. Philip II of Spain, nephew of John III and husband (by his first marriage) of John’s daughter Maria, had already made his preparations, and, when the cardinal-king died on January 31, 1580, Philip summoned the authorities to obey him. An army under the great duke of Alba entered Portugal in 1580; the resistance of António, prior of Crato (illegitimate son of John III’s brother Luís), acclaimed António I at Santarém, collapsed; and Philip II of Spain became Philip I of Portugal (1580–98).

Medieval social and economic development

Medieval Portugal comprised regions of considerable diversity. In the north the old aristocracy of Leonese descent owned large estates worked mainly by serfs. In the southern territory that had been reconquered from Muslim rule, there were many towns, often separated by districts almost barren and depopulated. Cistercian monks, who had reached Portugal by 1143, took the initiative in settling these areas; later kings such as Sancho I and Afonso III established concelhos (municipalities), granting them chartered privileges designed to attract settlers. Tax concessions were often given, and freedom was promised to serfs or to Christian captives after a year’s residence. In the south, however, the concelhos were burdened with defense duties. The cavaleiros-vilãos (villein knights) were obliged to horse and arm themselves; the peões, or less-substantial men, were required to serve as foot soldiers in defense of the country and perhaps also on a fossado (raid) into Muslim territory.

At court the king was advised by his curia regis (court or council), comprising the majordomus curiae, the head of the administration, the military chief or signifer, the dapifer curiae (steward of the household), the chancellor (an official whose origins in Portugal were Burgundian rather than Visigothic), and any members of the greater aristocracy, the ricos-homens, who might be at court. The ricos-homens also comprised the bishops and abbots and masters of the orders of knighthood; many held private civil or military authority. The lesser nobility were without such rights. Below them came various classes of free commoners, such as the cavaleiros-vilãos and the malados, men who had commended themselves to protectors. There were numerous serfs and slaves.

There had been several shifts in the social structure by the end of the medieval period. Many of the old aristocracy lost their position at the advent of the house of Aviz, and the new nobility, exemplified in the house of Bragança, was often of bureaucratic or ministerial origin. Representatives of the commoners, first attending the Cortes in 1254 on behalf of the concelhos, took an increasing part in politics. The Cortes were very frequently called during the reigns of John I, Edward, and Afonso V, but the avenues of power had become wider by the 16th century, and John III’s proposal (1525) to call them only every 10 years aroused no opposition. Although the trade guilds were slow in developing, they took some part in determining local taxation in the 13th century. Trade increased, Portuguese merchants having had connections with the Low Countries from the time of Afonso Henriques and with England from the early 13th century. The political crisis of 1385 was followed by inflation and debasements; thereafter there was no national gold currency until 1435, when West African sources began to be tapped.

The discoveries and the empire

Conquest and exploration

The idea of expansion into Africa was a logical result of the completion of the Reconquista in the peninsula, and the conquest of Ceuta in North Africa (1415) probably provided the impulse toward further expansion. The simple idea of fighting the Muslims on their own soil was linked with more-complicated motives: the desire to explore in a scientific sense, the hope of finding a way to the rich spice trade of the Indies, and the impulse to spread the Christian faith. These purposes were gradually molded together into a national enterprise, though at first they represented the hopes and aspirations of one man, Prince Henry. The third son of John I and Philippa of Lancaster, known rather inaccurately as “the Navigator” (he himself never went farther afield than Tangier), Henry became (1420) master of the Order of Christ, which King Dinis had founded (1319). The resources of the order were used to draw together skilled geographers and navigators and to equip a series of expeditions that only gradually began to bear fruit.

The date of Prince Henry’s earliest expedition was about 1418, visiting the island of Porto Santo; the first call at Madeira probably dates from 1419. An attempt was made to settle in the Canary Islands, and between 1427 and 1431 the Azores were visited by Portuguese seamen. Both the Azores and Madeira were then uninhabited, and their colonization proceeded fairly rapidly from about 1445. Sugar was exported to Europe and gave the islands great economic importance. Meanwhile, Prince Henry’s ships were probing the African coast, passing Cape Bojador in 1434 and Rio de Oro in 1436. The unsuccessful expedition against Tangier (1437) was followed by a break in the explorations, but in 1439 Prince Henry was authorized to colonize the Azores; from 1440, further expeditions equipped with a new and lighter ship, the caravel, reached the Bay of Arguin (1443) and Cape Verde (1444) and by Henry’s death (1460) had explored the coast as far south as Sierra Leone.

Under Afonso V, three military expeditions were sent against Morocco (1458, 1463, and 1471); by the last of them, Tangier and Arzila were captured. The African explorations were not entirely neglected, but it remained for John II, with his sharp sense of the national interest, to found a fortress and trading post in the Gulf of Guinea at Elmina (São Jorge da Mina, 1481–82). Diogo Cão explored the mouth of the Congo in 1482 and then advanced to Cape Cross, 200 leagues southward (1486). The Kongo kingdom converted to Christianity and allied itself with the Portuguese; its first Christian king, Afonso I (c. 1506–43), made M’banza Congo (renamed São Salvador do Congo in 1534) a centre of Portuguese influence, but the Kongo kingdom fell into internal strife, and Portuguese interests were transferred to the neighbouring kingdom of Angola. Paulo Dias de Novais founded Luanda, the first European-style city in western Africa south of the Equator, in 1576. In 1488 Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached the East African coast, and the seaway to India lay open. Dias’s return was followed in 1493 with the news that Christopher Columbus had, he thought, found the “Indies” by sailing across the Atlantic. Much as this news must have perturbed the Portuguese, Columbus brought no news of the spiceries or the cities of the East. John II ordered the preparation of an expedition to India by way of the Cape of Good Hope, though this sailed only after his death. John also contested the Spanish claim to all lands discovered west of the Atlantic, and, by the Treaty of Tordesillas, Spain’s rights were limited to what lay more than 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. Thus the territory that was to become Brazil was reserved for Portugal.

The Treaty of Tordesillas had also confirmed Portugal’s right to the exploration of Africa and the seaway to India. In July 1497 Vasco da Gama set sail with four ships on the first expedition to India. It reached Calicut (Kozhikode) on the southwestern coast of India the following spring, and the survivors made their way back to Lisbon in the autumn of 1499 with specimens of Oriental merchandise. A second fleet was prepared under Pedro Álvares Cabral, who touched the Brazilian coast (April 22, 1500) and claimed it for Portugal.

Control of the sea trade

In 1505 Francisco de Almeida arrived as viceroy of India and supported the ruler of Cochin against the zamorin (Hindu ruler) of Calicut. The control of sea trade, the chief source of Portuguese wealth in the East, was assured by the defeat of Muslim naval forces off Diu in 1509. Almeida’s successor, Afonso de Albuquerque, conquered Goa (1510), which he made the seat of Portuguese power, and Malacca (1511); sent two expeditions to the Moluccas (1512 and 1514); and captured Hormuz in the Persian Gulf (1515). Soon after, Fernão Peres de Andrade reached Guangzhou (Canton) in China; in 1542 Portuguese merchants were permitted to settle at Liampo (Ningbo), and in 1557 they founded the colony of Macau (Macao).

Albuquerque was responsible for this conception of a system of strongpoints that secured Portuguese domination of trade with the Orient for nearly a century. Goa soon became the chief port of western India; Hormuz controlled the Persian Gulf, and Malacca became the gateway from the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea, while a string of fortified trading posts secured the coast of East Africa and the gulf and shores of India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Farther east, less-fortified settlements were established with the consent of the native rulers from Bengal to China, and the trade of the principal Spice Islands was in Portuguese hands. The preservation of the whole system was entrusted to a governor, who sometimes held the rank of viceroy, at Goa; although Portuguese arms had both triumphs and reverses, their control of the Oriental trade remained substantial, if never complete, until the 17th century, when the Dutch, at war with the joint crown of Portugal and Spain and deprived of their traditional trade with Lisbon, began to seek spices from their source and effectively demolished the Portuguese monopoly.

Union of Spain and Portugal, 1580–1640

After Philip II of Spain had occupied Portugal in 1580, the island of Terceira in the Azores held out for António of Crato, who himself sought alliances in England and France. In 1582 a French expedition to establish him in the Azores was defeated, and in 1589 an English attempt upon Lisbon, led by Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Norris, failed dismally. António died in Paris in 1595, but the true symbol of Portuguese independence was not him but King Sebastian himself. The Portuguese people refused to believe that he was dead and nourished a messianic faith in his reappearance, of which four pretenders sought to avail themselves, the last as late as 1600 and as far afield as Venice.

Meanwhile, Philip arrived in Portugal and was accepted as King Philip I (1580–98) by the Cortes held at Tomar in 1581. Philip sought to preserve Portuguese autonomy, to consider the union as a personal one like that of Aragon and Castile under Ferdinand and Isabella, to appoint only Portuguese to the administration, to summon the Cortes frequently, and to be accompanied by a Portuguese council in Madrid. However, these undertakings were neglected by his successor, Philip II (III of Spain; 1598–1621), and completely violated by Philip III (IV of Spain; 1621–40).

Portuguese resentment against Spanish rule was exacerbated by the failure of these kings to visit Portugal, the appointment of Spaniards to Portuguese offices, the loss of trade as a consequence of Spain’s foreign wars, and the levying of taxation to sustain these wars. In 1624 the Dutch seized Bahia in Brazil, only to be expelled by a joint Spanish and Portuguese expedition the following year. But in 1630 the Dutch occupied Pernambuco in northeastern Brazil and the adjoining sugar estates, which they held for a generation. The final straw was the plan formulated in 1640 by Gaspar de Guzmán y Pimental, conde-duque de Olivares, to use Portuguese troops against the equally discontented Catalans. Two Portuguese insurrections, in 1634 and 1637, had failed to mount real threats, but in 1640 Spain’s power was extended to the utmost by war with France and revolt in Catalonia. The French minister, Armand-Jean du Plessis, cardinal et duc de Richelieu, already had agents in Lisbon, and a leader was found in John, duke of Bragança, a grandson of the duchess Catherine (niece of John III) whose claims had been overridden in 1580 by Philip II of Spain. Taking advantage of the unpopularity of the governor, Margaret of Savoy, duchess of Mantua, and her secretary of state, Miguel de Vasconcelos, the leaders of the party of independence carried through a nationalist revolution on December 1, 1640. Vasconcelos was almost the only victim; the Spanish garrisons were driven out, and on December 15 the duke of Bragança was crowned as John IV (1640–56).

The house of Bragança, 1640–1910

The success of the new regime was not finally assured until 1668, when Spain at last recognized Portuguese independence. Before that, faced with the threat of a Spanish invasion, John had sent missions to the courts of Europe in quest of alliances. France now refused a formal treaty. The Dutch, having seized northern Brazil, accepted a truce in Europe and proceeded to capture Angola from Portugal. In 1642 John negotiated a treaty with Charles I of England, but this was made void by Charles’s execution in 1649. Meanwhile, the Portuguese defeated the Spaniards at Montijo (May 26, 1644) and warded off several invasions. In 1654 they made a treaty with the English Commonwealth, obtaining aid in return for commercial concessions. The Dutch were finally expelled from Pernambuco in northern Brazil. By a secret article of the Peace of the Pyrenees (November 7, 1659), France promised Spain that it would provide no further assistance to Portugal, but in 1661 Portugal signed a treaty of alliance with the restored English monarchy. In 1662 Charles II of England married John’s daughter Catherine of Bragança and, in return for a large dowry including the cession of Bombay and Tangier, provided arms and men for the war with Spain. The Portuguese defense was organized by the German soldier Friedrich Hermann von Schönberg (later duke of Schomberg); in June 1663 Sancho Manuel, conde de Vila Flor, defeated Don Juan de Austria at Ameixial, and in June 1665 von Schönberg won the important victory of Montes Claros. Peace was finally made by the Treaty of Lisbon early in 1668.

When John IV died, his second son, Afonso VI (1656–83), was only age 13. Afonso’s mother, Luísa de Gusmão, acted as regent until June 1662, when he began to rule. Afonso himself was feebleminded, but the country was capably governed by Luiz de Vasconcelos e Sousa, conde de Castelo Melhor, until 1667. At that point, the French princess, Maria Francesca of Savoy, who had married Afonso the previous year, entered into an intrigue with his more personable brother Peter, who later reigned as Peter II. They contrived to dismiss Castelo Melhor and to have Maria Francesca’s marriage to Afonso annulled. She at once married Peter (1668), who was declared regent. Afonso, though still king, was kept a virtual prisoner in the Azores and at Sintra until his death.

During the reign of Peter II (1683–1706), Portugal recovered from the strain of the Spanish wars and began to benefit from the discovery of gold and precious stones in Brazil. The first gold strike in Minas Gerais took place in 1693, and, in the last years of the 17th century, considerable wealth was extracted; however, it was not until 1728, when diamonds were discovered, that the mineral wealth of Brazil formed a very substantial part of the revenue of the Portuguese crown.

The 18th century

In the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14), Portugal’s recent friends England and France fought on opposing sides. Although Peter initially sought to remain neutral, Portugal joined the Anglo-Austrian Grand Alliance in 1703 and provided a base for the archduke Charles (later Emperor Charles VI) to conduct his war for the Spanish throne. Then on December 27, 1703, the English envoy, John Methuen, concluded the treaty that bears his name, by which the exchange of port wine for English woolens became the basis for Anglo-Portuguese trade. Although the treaty of 1654 had secured great privileges for English merchants in Lisbon, neither it nor the treaties of 1642 and 1661, by which the traditional alliance was restored, had created trade. This was now done, and, with the wealth that soon poured into Lisbon from Brazil, the English merchants gained a commanding position in the trade of Portugal. The political treaties of 1703 proved less fruitful. The Portuguese general António Luís de Sousa, marquês das Minas, entered Madrid in 1706, but French and Spanish forces were victorious at Almansa in 1707, and in 1711 the French admiral René Duguay-Trouin sacked Rio de Janeiro. At the conclusion of the war, Portugal negotiated a peace treaty with France (April 1713), but peace with Spain was not concluded until 1715.

Portugal under Peter’s son John V (1706–50) attained a degree of prosperity unknown since the restoration of independence from Spain. The tax of a royal fifth levied on the precious metals and stones of Brazil gave the monarchy an independent source of wealth. The Cortes, which had met irregularly since 1640, was no longer summoned, and government was carried out by ministers appointed by the king. John V desired the absolute authority enjoyed by Louis XIV in France. John converted his wealth into papal and other dignities: the archbishop of Lisbon became a patriarch (1716); Pope Benedict XIV gave John the title “His Most Faithful Majesty” (1749); and royal academies, palaces, and libraries were inaugurated. But in his later years, his ministers proved inadequate, and the kingdom sank into stagnation.

On John’s death, his son Joseph (1750–77) appointed as minister Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo (later conde de Oeiras and marquês de Pombal), who soon gained a complete ascendancy over the king and endeavoured to replace the stagnant absolutism with a more active type of despotism that, with some qualifications, deserves the epithet “enlightened.” Pombal’s full powers date from his efficient handling of the crisis caused by the disastrous Lisbon earthquake of November 1755, but even before this he had reformed the sugar and diamond trades, set up a national silk industry (1750), and formed one chartered company to control the sardine- and tunny-fishing industry of the Algarve and another to trade with northern Brazil. In 1756 he founded a board of trade with powers to limit the privileges enjoyed by the English merchants under the treaties of 1654 and 1661 and set up the General Company for Wines of Alto Douro to control the port wine trade. Industries for the manufacture of hats (1759), cutlery (1764), and other articles were established with varying success.

Pombal’s methods were arbitrary and his enemies numerous. His reform of the wine industry provoked a riot in Porto (1757) that was savagely repressed. However, his principal victims were the Jesuits, who were expelled in 1759 from all the Portuguese dominions, and the nobility, in particular José Mascarenhas, duque de Aveiro, and the Távora family (see Conspiracy of the Távoras), who were accused of an attack on the king (September 3, 1758), condemned, and executed (January 12, 1759). Having eliminated the Jesuits from the educational system, Pombal applied regalist principles in the reform of the University of Coimbra (1772) and the royal board of censorship (1768), which supervised the system of lower education from 1771.

While Pombal succeeded in modifying the ascendancy of the British merchants in Portugal, he invoked the English alliance in 1762 when Spain, prompted by the renewal of the Bourbon Family Compact with France, invaded Portugal. The Portuguese army was reformed by Wilhelm von Schaumburg-Lippe, and an English force was led by James O’Hara, 2nd Baron Tyrawley, and John Campbell, 4th earl of Loudoun. A peace treaty was signed in February 1763 at Fontainebleau. After Joseph’s death on February 24, 1777, his daughter Maria I (1777–1816), who had married Joseph’s brother and her uncle (Peter III), acceded to the throne; Pombal was dismissed (1777) and eventually found guilty on several charges. His successors made peace with Spain by the Treaty of San Ildefonso (1777).

The French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars

After the death of Peter III in 1786 and her eldest son Joseph in 1788, Maria I suffered from melancholia. In 1792 her mental instability increased following news of the radical phases of the French Revolution, and she ceased to reign. Her surviving son ruled in her name, formally became prince regent in 1799, and on her death became John VI (1816–26). In 1793 Portugal joined England and Spain against France, sending a naval division to assist the English Mediterranean fleet and an army to the Catalan front. The Peace of Basel (July 1795), by which Spain abandoned its allies, left Portugal still at war. Although subjected to pressure from the French Directory and from the Spanish minister, Manuel de Godoy, Portugal remained unmolested until 1801, when Godoy sent an ultimatum and invaded the Alentejo. By the Peace of Badajoz (June 1801), Portugal lost the town of Olivenza and paid an indemnity.

From the Peace of Amiens (1802) until 1807, Portugal was once more immune from attack, though it was subjected to continuous pressure to break off the English connection. Napoleon sought to close all continental ports to British ships, but Portugal endeavoured to maintain neutrality. The secret Franco-Spanish Treaty of Fontainebleau (October 1807) provided for Portugal’s eventual dismemberment by Napoleon I and Godoy. Already one of Napoleon’s generals, Andoche Junot, was hastening across Spain with a French army, and on November 27 the prince regent and the royal family and court embarked on a fleet lying in the Tagus River and were escorted by British vessels to Brazil; the court remained at Rio de Janeiro for 14 years. Junot declared the Braganças deposed, but his occupation of Portugal was challenged in August 1808 by the arrival of Sir Arthur Wellesley (later duke of Wellington) and 13,500 British troops in Mondego Bay. Winning the victories of Roliça (August 17) and Vimeiro (August 21), Wellington enabled his superiors to negotiate the Convention of Sintra (August 31), by which Junot was allowed to evacuate Portugal with his army.

A second French invasion (1808–09) led to Sir John Moore’s death at La Coruña, Spain, in January 1809 and the reembarkation of the British forces. In February William Carr (later Viscount) Beresford was placed in command of the Portuguese army, and in March a French force under Marshal Nicolas-Jean de Dieu Soult advanced from Galicia and occupied Porto. Wellesley returned to Portugal in April, drove Soult from the north, and, after his victory of Talavera de la Reina in Spain (July), withdrew to Portugal.

The third French invasion followed in August 1810 when Marshal André Masséna with Marshal Michel Ney and Junot entered Beira province. Defeated by Wellington at Bussaco (September 27) near Coimbra, the French found themselves facing the entrenched lines of Torres Vedras, north of Lisbon, where they wintered amid great privations. By the spring of 1811 they could only retreat, and on March 5 they began the evacuation of Portugal, harassed all the way by English and Portuguese attacks and crossing the frontier after a defeat at Sabugal (April 3).

Portugal and France made peace on May 30, 1814. Portugal was represented at the Congress of Vienna, but it played little part in the settlement. The series of Anglo-Portuguese treaties concluded between the years 1809 and 1817, however, was important insofar as it extended many of the conditions of the Anglo-Portuguese alliance to Brazil and had an influence on the future of Africa. England’s efforts to enlist Portuguese collaboration in suppressing the slave trade resulted in the treaty of January 22, 1815, and in the additional convention of 1817, by reason of which Portugal’s claims to a considerable part of Africa were formally recognized.

Constitutionalism

The Napoleonic campaigns caused great devastation in Portugal, and the absence of the royal family and the presence of a foreign commander (Beresford) combined with revolutionary agitation and the influence of Spanish liberalism to produce an atmosphere of discontent. On December 16, 1815, Brazil was raised to the rank of a kingdom united with Portugal, and John VI, who took the throne in March 1816, showed no desire to return to Portugal. In 1817 Beresford suppressed a conspiracy in Lisbon, and the Masonic leader General Gomes Freire de Andrade was executed. Unrest increased, and, when Beresford himself went to Brazil (March 1820) to press John to return, a constitutionalist revolution began in Porto (August 24, 1820); the revolution soon spread throughout the country and led to the formation of a junta in Lisbon (October 4). On October 10, when Beresford returned to Portugal, he was not allowed to land, and British officers were expelled from the army. A constituent assembly was summoned that drew up a very liberal constitution, thus confronting John VI with an accomplished fact.

John’s reluctance to return was at last overcome. Leaving his elder son Peter to govern Brazil, John landed at Lisbon on July 3, 1821. He swore to uphold the constitution, but his wife, Carlota Joaquina, and their second son, Michael, refused to take the oath and were sentenced to banishment, though this was not carried out. The Portuguese constitutionalists, not appreciating the determination of Brazil not to yield its status as a kingdom, sought to compel Pedro to return, but, rather than sacrifice the rule of the Braganças in Brazil, he declared Brazilian independence (September 7, 1822) and became emperor of Brazil as Pedro I. This enabled his brother Michael to appeal to absolutist forces in Portugal to overthrow the constitutionalists; an insurrection led by Michael almost succeeded (April 30, 1824), but, through the action of the foreign ministers, John VI was restored and Michael went into exile in Vienna (June 1824).

The War of the Two Brothers

John VI acknowledged the independence of Brazil in 1825, assuming pro forma the imperial title and then yielding it to Pedro. However, when John died (March 10, 1826), no provision had been made for the succession except that his daughter Maria Isabel was named regent. Pedro, as Peter IV of Portugal, issued from Brazil a charter providing for a parliamentary regime by the authorization of the monarchy and not based on the sovereignty of the people. He then made a conditional abdication (May 1826) of the Portuguese throne in favour of his seven-year-old daughter Maria da Glória provided that she marry her uncle Michael and swear to accept the charter. This compromise could not be effective. The absolutists had hoped that Pedro would resign all rights to the Portuguese crown, and the council of regency hesitated to publish the charter until General João Carlos de Saldanha (later duque de Saldanha) forced their hand. In 1827 Michael took the oath and was appointed regent; he landed in Lisbon in February 1828, and his supporters at once began to persecute the liberals. A form of the Cortes met in Lisbon and in July 1828 repudiated Pedro’s claims and declared Michael the rightful king.

Only Terceira Island in the Azores sustained the liberal cause. In June 1829, however, a regency on behalf of Maria da Glória was established in Terceira, and in 1831 Pedro, having abdicated the Brazilian throne, went to Europe and began to raise money and an army for the conquest of Portugal. In February 1832 the expedition sailed to Terceira, and in July the liberals, led by Pedro, disembarked at Mindelo near Porto, which they soon occupied. However, the rest of the country stood by Michael, who besieged the liberals in Porto for a year (July 1832–July 1833). By then enthusiasm for Michael had waned, and António José de Sousa Manuel, duque de Terceira, and Captain (later Sir) Charles Napier, who had taken command of the liberal navy, made a successful landing in the Algarve (June 1833). Terceira advanced on Lisbon, which fell in July 1833, and Michael capitulated at Evora-Monte in May 1834.

Further political strife

The War of the Two Brothers ended with the exile of Michael (June) and the death of Pedro (September 24, 1834). Maria da Glória became queen as Maria II (1834–53) at age 15. While Maria necessarily came under the influence of the successful generals of the civil war, her principal aim was to defend her father’s charter (which had been granted by the crown) from those who demanded a “democratic” constitution like that of 1822. In September 1836 the latter, thenceforth called Septembrists, seized power. The chartist leaders rebelled and were exiled, but by 1842 the Septembrist front was no longer united, and António Bernardo da Costa Cabral restored the charter.

In 1846 the movement of Maria da Fonte, a popular rising against higher taxation to improve roads and reforms in public health in which almost all parties joined, put an end to Costa Cabral’s government but left Portugal divided between the Septembrists, who held Porto, and Saldanha, now in Queen Maria’s confidence, in Lisbon. Saldanha negotiated for the intervention of other members of the Quadruple Alliance (formed in April 1834 by England, France, Spain, and Portugal), and a combined British and Spanish force received the surrender of the Porto junta in June 1847 and ended the war with the Convention of Gramido (June 29, 1847). Saldanha governed until 1849, when Costa Cabral resumed office only to be overthrown in April 1851. Saldanha then held office again for five years (1851–56), and the period of peace finally allowed the country to settle down. This “Regeneration” ended civil strife and established party government.

Maria II was succeeded by Peter V (1853–61), her eldest son by her second husband, Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg. Peter, who married Stephanie of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen in 1858, showed promise of being a capable monarch but died of typhoid fever on November 11, 1861. His brother Louis (1861–89) seemed to have inherited a country that had recovered from the Napoleonic invasions and from civil wars, political strife, and pronunciamentos (military coups). But, although the main parties were now defined as Historicals (i.e., radicals) and Regenerators (moderates), the alternation of governments gradually ceased to reflect public feeling, and, in the last years of Louis’s reign, republicanism began to gain ground.

Overseas empire

Brazil’s independence in 1822 left Portugal’s overseas empire a largely African one, with scattered small holdings in Asia (in western India mainly Goa, Damão [now Daman], and Diu; East Timor in Indonesia; and Macau in South China). Beginning in 1836, Portugal pursued a policy of African territorial expansion and economic enhancement, concentrating first on Angola and later on Mozambique and Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea-Bissau). Portugal’s role in the European partition of Africa in the late 19th century was limited by its long-standing economic dependence on Great Britain. A colonial movement gained momentum in Lisbon, and a Portuguese scheme known as the “Rose-Coloured Map,” which laid claim to a colony stretching across Africa from Angola to Mozambique, was recognized by France and Germany in 1886. However, Britain challenged Portugal’s claim to territory in central Africa (in what are now Malawi and Zimbabwe) and issued an ultimatum, dated January 11, 1890, demanding the immediate withdrawal of Portuguese forces from the disputed regions. The ultimatum implicitly threatened, in the short run, the use of British naval force and, in the long run, an end to the venerable Anglo-Portuguese alliance, which dated from the late 14th century. The Lisbon government, obliged to comply, subsequently resigned. The ultimatum crisis rocked Portuguese public opinion, heightening imperial fever in the capital and principal towns, compromising the monarchy of King Charles I, and bolstering republicans.

Despite the failure of the central-corridor plan, Portugal retained a large African empire (about 8 percent of the continent). Two Anglo-Portuguese agreements—the 1891 boundary treaty and the so-called Windsor Treaty of October 14, 1899—safeguarded Portugal’s sovereignty over its existing colonies and reaffirmed the ancient alliance.

The rise of republicanism

During the period from 1890 to 1910, the relatively stable politics of rotating governments under the constitutional monarchy disintegrated. Feuding monarchist parties and politicians agreed that Portugal faced severe economic, financial, and social problems, but they quarreled over solutions. The republicans increased their support in Lisbon and the larger towns as well as in the rural south. In 1906 João Franco, a prominent politician with reformist plans for saving the monarchy, was appointed premier. Unable to unite the factious monarchists, he began to govern by decree. Franco boldly undertook to reform finance and administration but was accused of illegal money transfers to Charles. These scandals were followed by rumours of further intrigue, and on February 1, 1908, Charles and his heir, Louis Philip, were assassinated in an open carriage in the streets of Lisbon. Whether the regicides were isolated fanatics or agents of a hidden organization such as the Carbonária, a republican secret society, the killings were applauded by the republicans, who immediately began their preparations for a final attack on the monarchy.

Only age 18 at his accession, Charles’s younger son, King Manuel II (1908–10), was ill-equipped to solidify the crumbling monarchist factions. In the general elections of August 1910, both Lisbon and Porto voted in favour of a republic. On October 3 the murder by an insane patient of a leading republican figure, the distinguished psychiatrist Miguel Bombarda, offered the pretext for a rising that had already been organized. Armed civilians, soldiers, and the men aboard some ships in the Tagus, under the leadership of António Machado Santos, a key Carbonária figure, began the republican revolution on October 4; the next morning, Portugal’s First Republic was declared from the balcony of the Lisbon City Hall. Manuel escaped via his yacht to Gibraltar and then to England, where he remained in exile until his death in 1932.

Social and economic conditions

The flow of wealth from Portugal’s overseas territories and trading posts helped to sustain the court and capital but did little to improve the domestic economy, which remained largely rural. The favourable financial position of the late 15th century—derived from trade in slaves, gold, and spices—did not long survive into the 16th century, when the expenses of maintaining far-flung and unproductive foreign stations and the depredations of pirates quickly absorbed any surpluses. There were few native industries. Not only were manufactured goods such as cloth, tapestry, and metalware imported, but so were basic foodstuffs, salt meat, cured fish, and dairy produce. Agriculture was little regarded, and insufficient land was available for smallholdings. During the years of Spanish domination, the ports were closed to English merchants. By the time the ports were reopened, after 1640, the flow of trade had found new channels, and the Dutch and English had outstripped Portugal as colonial powers. The discovery of gold in Brazil at the end of the 17th century revived Portugal’s economy, but gold production was in decline by 1750, while the diamond market was saturated. In the later 18th century a series of protectionist measures were introduced, many by Pombal. The Methuen Treaty (1703) with England had strengthened the port wine trade at the expense of Portuguese cloth; further attempts were later made to improve the export value of port wine. Support was also given for the production of woolen goods, linen, paper, porcelain, and cutlery and to the tunny and sardine fisheries. Pombal attempted to create an educated bourgeoisie, but the Portuguese textile industry could not withstand mechanized competition. After 1850 public works, railways, and ports were given priority, but it was not until the 20th century that any sustained attack upon Portugal’s economic difficulties was undertaken.

The First Republic, 1910–26

The new regime formed a provisional government under the presidency of Teófilo Braga, a well-known writer. A new electoral law was issued giving the vote only to a restricted number of adult males. The provisional government presided over the election of a constituent assembly, which opened on June 19, 1911. The constitution was passed by the assembly on August 20, and the provisional government surrendered its authority a few days later (August 24) to the new president, Manuel José de Arriaga. Despite initial hopes that the republic would solve the massive problems inherited from the monarchy, Portugal soon became western Europe’s most turbulent, unstable parliamentary regime.

Although a monarchist invasion led by Henrique de Paiva Couceiro in October 1911 was unsuccessful, the main danger to the new regime came from its internal divisions. For the moment, it was fairly united in support of abolishing the monarchy and disestablishing the Roman Catholic Church. The religious orders were expelled (October 8, 1910) and their property confiscated. New legislation banned the teaching of religion in schools and universities and annulled many religious holidays. Persecution of Catholics in the early years of the republic attracted international attention and brought the new political system into conflict with foreign diplomats, humanitarian organizations, and journalists. Indeed, though the government initiated advances in education, health, civic freedoms, and colonial development, positive results were overwhelmed by administrative instability, labour unrest, public violence, and military intervention in politics.

By 1912 the republicans were divided into Evolutionists (moderates), led by António José de Almeida; Unionists (centre party), led by Manuel de Brito Camacho; and Democrats (the leftist core of the original party), led by Afonso Costa. A number of prominent republicans had no specific party. The whirligig of republican political life offered little improvement on the monarchist regime, and in 1915 the army showed signs of restlessness. General Pimenta de Castro formed a military government and permitted the monarchists to reorganize, but a Democratic coup in May led to his arrest and consignment to the Azores, along with Machado Santos. Dominated by Costa’s oratory, partisan press, and political machine, the Democrats’ regime was in turn overthrown by another bloody military coup (December 1917), led by the former minister to Germany, Major Sidónio Pais.

The authoritarian, unstable “New Republic” of charismatic President Pais failed to pacify the feuding factions, and its collapse precipitated a brief civil war. Following Pais’s assassination in Lisbon (December 14, 1918), republicans and monarchists fought a civil war (January 1919) in which the final armed effort to restore the monarchy failed, and political power was restored to the chastened Democrats. Four key tensions characterized the republic’s troubled political system: (1) excessive factionalism, (2) the tendency of the factions to bear allegiance to personalities rather than to ideas, institutions, and the public interest, (3) disparity between the landholding patterns of the north (typified by minifundias—small subsistence farms) and the south (typified by latifundias—large estates worked by landless peasants), and (4) the concentration of economic development in Lisbon, at the expense of the provinces.

Though officially neutral, Portugal at the outbreak of World War I had proclaimed its adhesion to the English alliance (August 7, 1914) and on November 23 committed itself to military operations against Germany. On September 11 the first expedition left to reinforce the African colonies, and there was fighting in northern Mozambique, on the Tanganyika (now Tanzania) frontier, and in southern Angola, on the frontier of German South West Africa. In February 1916, in compliance with a request from Britain, Portugal seized German ships lying in Portuguese ports, and on March 9 Germany declared war on Portugal. A Portuguese expeditionary force under General Fernando Tamagnini de Abreu went to Flanders in 1917, and on April 9, 1918, the Germans mounted a major attack in the Battle of the Lys. Although the Allies won the war and Portugal’s colonies were safeguarded, the 0.75 percent of the war indemnity paid by Germany to Portugal was scant compensation for the heavy costs incurred both in the field and at home, including the casualties of the African campaigns and the Western Front, the alienation of a portion of the army officer corps, crippling war debts to Britain, intense inflation, and a scarcity of food and fuel.

Former Evolutionist Almeida became the only president to complete his term during the First Republic, but the cycles of bankruptcy, corruption, public violence, and military insurrectionism continued. Finally, on May 28, 1926, the parliamentary republic was overthrown in a bloodless military coup that instituted what was to become western Europe’s most long-lived authoritarian system.

The dictatorship, 1926–74

The Salazar regime

The provisional military government was shortly taken over by General António Óscar de Fragoso Carmona, who favoured sweeping changes. In 1928, in the face of financial crisis, Carmona appointed António de Oliveira Salazar minister of finance with full powers over expenditure. A prominent professor of economics at the University of Coimbra, Salazar assembled a civilian elite of intellectuals and bureaucrats to steer the course of recovery. Budgetary surpluses became the hallmark of his regime, making possible large expenditures for social programs, rearmament, and infrastructure development. This progress, coupled with personal austerity and hard work, won Salazar the grudging collaboration of diverse parties and interest groups that included monarchists, conservative republicans, fascists, pseudofascists, nationalists, the church, business leaders, land barons, and the military establishment. As minister of colonies in 1930, he prepared the Colonial Act, assimilating the administration of the overseas territories to his system. In July 1932 Salazar became prime minister, a post he was to hold (along with other key ministries during crises) until 1968.

The new constitution of 1933 declared Portugal a “unitary, corporatist republic.” Salazar’s New State (Estado Novo) provided for a National Assembly, with deputies elected quadrennially as a bloc, and a Corporative Chamber comprising representatives of occupations. All seats in the assembly went to government supporters; the Corporative Chamber was not established until employers’ and workers’ syndicates were formed. The government regulated labour-management relations, banned strikes and lockouts, and monitored social welfare planning. Political parties were prohibited, and all eligible voters were encouraged to join the National Union, an approved loyalist movement. Ever mindful of the confusion that preceded it, the New State emphasized order over freedom and attempted to “neutralize” society through the use of censorship, propaganda, and political imprisonment. On the other hand, it partially restored the pre-1910 privileges of the church in law, society, and education.

During the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), Salazar backed the Nationalists led by General Francisco Franco, who triumphed and controlled all of Spain by the spring of 1939. In World War II, Portugal maintained official neutrality (while quietly favouring Britain) until Britain invoked the ancient Anglo-Portuguese alliance to obtain bases in the Azores. Portugal joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as a founding member in 1949 but did not gain admission to the United Nations until 1955.

Portugal’s foreign and colonial policies met with increasing difficulty both at home and abroad beginning in the 1950s. In the presidential election of 1958, General Humberto Delgado generated political heat after challenging the regime’s candidate, Admiral Américo Tomás. Internationally, the tensions of the Cold War gave Portugal’s largely undeveloped overseas empire a new significance. The determination of the Indian government to annex Portuguese India led to a severing of diplomatic relations (August 1955) and to mass invasions of the Portuguese possessions by Indian passive resisters. Portugal disputed but effectively lost the enclaves of Dadra and Nagar Haveli to India (despite a ruling by the International Court of Justice in April 1960 favouring Portugal), and on December 19, 1961, India took over Goa, Diu, and Daman.

Salazar had made it clear that he did not favour decolonization, and, when in early 1961 Angola was the scene of disturbances, he reinforced the troops in the African territories and took over the Ministry of Defense. Nevertheless, colonial wars erupted in Angola, Mozambique, and Portuguese Guinea between 1961 and 1964.

Despite its failure to rejuvenate agriculture and its reluctance to industrialize, perhaps the most important contribution of the New State was to the economy. Development plans, closely monitored by the demanding Salazar, were conservative but consistent. The government significantly reduced its debt, diminished its economic dependence on British investment, and tightly controlled foreign investment and did not openly encourage it until the mid-1960s, when expensive wars in Angola, Mozambique, and Portuguese Guinea prompted a revision of the investment code. The government also supported industry, though not massively, and emphasized infrastructure development over health, education, and welfare. From about 1960 until the inflation surge and energy crisis of 1973, Portugal experienced economic growth at an annual rate of 5 to 7 percent, which constituted a boom for western Europe’s poorest country.

The New State after Salazar

In September 1968 Salazar was incapacitated by a stroke. President Tomás invited Marcello Caetano, one of the architects of the New State, to form a government, but Salazar was never informed of this transition. On July 27, 1970, he died. Although Caetano was more worldly and less reserved than his predecessor, he proved unable to reverse the tide of Portugal’s African wars, to alleviate the economic woes of 1973–74, or to avert revolution.

Portugal since 1974

The Revolution of the Carnations

Two developments galvanized the movement that was shortly to topple the dictatorship. The first occurred in mid-1973, when career army officers became alienated by a government measure commissioning militia officers for service in the colonial wars. The second incitement was the publication in February 1974 of the book Portugal e o futuro (“Portugal and the Future”) by the colonial war hero General António de Spínola, who argued that the wars in Africa could not be settled by force of arms and advocated negotiated autonomy for the colonies and an alternative to Caetano’s leadership. Some 200 to 300 officers calling themselves the Armed Forces Movement (Movimento das Forças Armadas; MFA), led by Francisco da Costa Gomes and other officers, planned and implemented the coup of April 25, 1974, which came to be known as the Revolution of the Carnations.

The revolution encountered little resistance from the dictatorship’s remaining loyalists and won initial support from an urban middle class vexed by economic and political uncertainty. The transition to a functioning, consolidating, pluralist Portuguese democracy mirrored, though in a nonviolent way, the political course of the French Revolution: an early moderate-conservative phase (May 1974–March 1975) followed by a middle radical-leftist phase (March–late November 1975) and a final moderate reaction (late November 1975–June 1976).

After exiling Caetano and Tomás, a subgroup of the MFA calling itself the Junta of National Salvation filled the political vacuum, installing Spínola as president and commencing negotiation with the African nationalist movements. Independence was granted to Portuguese Guinea (as Guinea-Bissau) almost immediately after the revolution. The new regime abolished such instruments of repression as censorship, the paramilitary forces, and the secret police. Spínola, who opposed rapid independence for the colonies without free referendums, resigned in September 1974, launched a countercoup attempt that failed (March 1975), and fled into exile.

By this time, radical MFA elements and their leftist civilian allies in the Portuguese Communist Party and other Marxist-Leninist groups had won virtual control over the government in Lisbon, sections of the armed forces, and the media. The MFA itself was restructured and a Council of the Revolution installed with the support of six political parties. An election for a national assembly in April 1975 drew 92 percent of eligible voters, a record in western European history. The decolonization of the Cape Verde Islands and Mozambique was effected in July 1975. Portugal’s remaining African territories achieved independence later the same year, thus ending a colonial involvement in Africa that had begun in 1415. However, in Angola full-scale, internationalized civil war followed Portugal’s departure, and Indonesia forcibly annexed briefly independent East Timor, controlling the territory until 1999.

Political and social instability prevailed through most of 1975. More than half a million people fled to Portugal from the former African colonies, adding a refugee problem to the already volatile domestic situation; some 30 persons died in incidents of public violence, new political parties proliferated, and strikes were widespread. In 1975 the government also decided to nationalize banking, transport, heavy industries, and the media. In the Alentejo in southern Portugal, farmworkers expropriated latifundia and established communal farming. On November 25, 1975, moderate military elements crushed a radical leftist coup in the army and restored order.

The 1976 constitution and subsequent reforms

In April 1976 the Constituent Assembly approved a new constitution, which committed Portugal to socialism. Parliamentary elections held on April 25 produced no single majority party; the Socialists, the Popular Democrats (centre-right), the Social Democratic Centre Party (conservative), and the Communist Party (founded 1921) made the strongest showings, and the Socialist leader, Mário Soares, formed a minority government. In June, General António Ramalho Eanes, who had been instrumental in preventing a radical leftist military coup in November 1975, won more than three-fifths of the valid votes cast in the presidential election.

Soares’s minority government resigned in December 1977, primarily because it was unable to enact an effective austerity program. A number of volatile coalition governments followed, until in 1980, in the general election scheduled by the constitution, a centre-right coalition, the Democratic Alliance (Alianca Democrática), swept into power. The new government swiftly moved to revise the character of the 1976 constitution. The Assembly of the Republic approved a series of reforms that included reducing the powers of the president and abolishing the Council of the Revolution, which had been given the power to determine the constitutionality of laws and gave the military effective veto power over legislation. These constitutional reforms completed Portugal’s transition to full civilian rule. Both government policy and public sentiment, as reflected in numerous elections and polls, favoured reprivatization of the largely nationalized economy, a de-emphasis on communal agriculture, and entry into the European Economic Community (EEC; renamed the European Community and now embedded in the European Union [EU]) as soon as possible.

The alliance faltered in 1982, propelling the country into yet another crisis. President Eanes called an early general election for April 1983, and the Socialists, led by Soares, scored an inconclusive victory. Because Portugal urgently needed a stable, broadly based government to tackle its severe economic problems, Soares formed a coalition government with the Social Democrats (formerly the Popular Democrats). It successfully implemented an 18-month emergency program and a four-year modernization plan in its quest for admission to the EEC.

The coalition, though precarious, lasted until June 13, 1985. It survived several internal crises caused predominantly by a division within the Social Democrats between a left wing favouring the coalition and a right wing that opposed the coalition’s economic policies. In May 1985 Aníbal Cavaco Silva, leader of the right wing, became head of the party. Almost immediately, Cavaco Silva questioned the viability of the coalition, voicing doubts especially on the subjects of labour and agrarian reform.

This crisis, which ended the coalition in June, had been intensified by nationwide strikes in the industrial and transport sectors led by communist unions and by demonstrations by parties on both the left and the right of the political spectrum calling for an end to the coalition government. Soares resigned, and in October 1985 the Social Democrats, campaigning on a platform advocating a free-market economy, became the largest single party in the Assembly of the Republic and were able to form a minority government with Cavaco Silva as prime minister. Portugal was admitted to the EEC on January 1, 1986, and on February 16 Soares became the country’s first civilian president in 60 years. The parliamentary elections of 1987 marked another milestone as Cavaco Silva’s Social Democrats won the first clear majority in the Assembly since the 1974 revolution. A renewal of this mandate four years later provided the continuity necessary for carrying out reforms.

Stabilization and the European future

By the end of the 20th century, Portugal’s democracy had become solidified. With the military’s withdrawal from politics and several revisions of the constitution, Portugal adopted what could be called a semipresidential system, which limited the president’s powers by investing significant authority in the prime minister. Portugal developed a multiparty system in which two major parties (the Socialists and the Social Democrats) and several minor parties emerged. In 1995 Cavaco Silva left office, replaced by Socialist António Guterres; the following year, Soares was succeeded as president by Socialist Jorge Sampaio, the former mayor of Lisbon. In 1999 the government adopted the euro, the EU’s single currency—which fully replaced the escudo as Portugal’s sole currency in 2002—and also returned Macau, its last overseas territory, to Chinese rule. Sampaio was reelected in 2001, but in 2002 Guterres’s government was ousted by the Social Democrats, whose leader, José Manuel Durão Barroso, formed a centre-right coalition government and promised to reduce taxes and spending and privatize some public services. Economic problems beset the new government, which in 2005 lost power to the Socialists, whose leader, José Socrates, became prime minister. In the 2009 parliamentary elections, the Socialists held onto power but fell short of an absolute majority.

Perhaps a reflection of the tremendous progress made by Portugal in establishing a successful democracy and in fully integrating itself into Europe, a Portuguese, Durão Barroso, was named president of the European Commission in 2004. Nevertheless, Portugal continued to experience several troubling problems. Despite economic growth during the 1990s, high unemployment persisted. Also of concern to political leaders were continued poverty in rural and urban areas, a growing gap between rich and poor, and administrative and labour inefficiency. Moreover, too large a share of Portugal’s population over age 40 had little formal education, and Portugal remained among western Europe’s poorest countries.

The protection of Portugal’s historic heritage became a serious issue; Portugal’s economy was partly dependent on tourism, but its fragile environment was endangered by the impact of tourism, urban sprawl, and a failure to limit and control air, water, and soil pollution brought on by growth and development. The increasing depopulation of interior rural areas, the result in part of urbanization and rural-urban migration, was an issue of major concern. Rural and provincial areas of Portugal experienced the steady loss of population to urban areas such as Greater Porto, Coimbra, and Lisbon. This movement further hampered agriculture, which faced stiff competition from other EU countries, and limited the availability of educational, health, and social services in rural areas. As Portugal increasingly evolved into an urban society, political leaders attempted to achieve a balance between growth and development (modernization) and the need to protect consumers, the public interest, and the rare but vulnerable environment.

By the beginning of the 21st century, Portugal had benefited from substantial improvements in health, communications, transportation, welfare, and education. The new pluralist democracy provided citizens with historically unprecedented civil liberties. Nevertheless, the country’s empire had vanished, and Portugal was highly dependent on imports of energy, capital, and food. During the 1990s, as a partner in further European integration, Portugal was under great pressure to conform to rigorous EU standards, procedures, and rules. New layers of administration were established, and trade, travel, employment, and other barriers started to fall in 1993, when Portugal began preparing for full economic and monetary union with other EU members.

From 1988 through 2000, Portugal celebrated many historical feats. Notably, the government sponsored commemorations of Portuguese exploration, including the 500th anniversaries of Bartolomeu Dias’s 1488 voyage that rounded the Cape of Good Hope and the founding of Brazil by Pedro Álvares Cabral in 1500. In 1998 Lisbon hosted the World’s Fair (Expo ’98), which also marked the 500th anniversary of the arrival of Vasco da Gama in Asia following his discovery of an all-water route from Europe. As the celebrations ended and the 21st century began, many wondered how the new Portugal would conceive of its national tradition and what effect European integration would have on the country’s self-image and national identity.